In 2016, the verb “to google” was finally added to the Oxford English Dictionary, despite years of consistent use. Each year, Time Magazine releases a list of the most “googled” terms for that year. This list in 2016 contained words such as Trump, Hillary Clinton, Prince, Hurricane Matthew, and Pokémon Go. If you find yourself feeling guilty of googling any of these words, don’t worry! So did the rest of the world.

Needless to say, the past two decades we have seen Google take over the world. For some, such as the Alaskan Bush People, they choose to hide from the technological advances of the world and rely on nature and what they can do with their own hands. For others, such as people probably reading this post, we have made it our mission to advance WITH the world and embrace what our brilliant human race has created.

This leads me to my hard thought topic of discussion. With the power of not only Google, but the entire World Wide Web, the possibilities are endless. Our culture is a culture of a get-rich-quick-reality-tv-vlogging-do-it-yourself-pinterest-loving phenomenon. I am definitely not critiquing these people because I am unashamedly next in line to try to take Joanna Gaines’ place on HGTV. But there is a constant theme here and that is this: Get found online. Everyone wants to “go viral,” as my dad would say. [Read more…]

Reading Time: 4 minutes

When I was ten months old, my family was barbecuing outside on our small patio in Minnesota. At one point, my parents went into the house briefly to prepare the side dishes, and while they were inside, I decided to explore our patio. Since I had started walking when I was nine months old, I was pretty mobile for a youngster.

For some reason, I was captivated by our grill when I began my patio explorations. I’m not sure why I was, but I was. The bad part was that our grill had already been turned on, and it was extremely hot.

Filled with curiosity and ignorance, and before my parents could stop me, I turned around and touched the grill.

Ouch.

I burned my hand badly, and had to be taken to the hospital. Although I had second-degree burns, I would recover in time. It was only a temporary flesh wound.

You could learn a lot from this story, but one big takeaway for me was this: what you don’t know can hurt you. Ignorance has a price. This time the price of ignorance was second-degree burns, but when we’re older, the price can be much greater. [Read more…]

Let’s say you lived in New York City and wanted to travel to New Zealand. How would you get there? Would you drive there? Would you walk? Swim? Take a taxi?

No, of course not. You’d take an airplane and fly to New Zealand. Why? Because the destination requires a specific method of getting there. In other words, your goal (getting to New Zealand) determines your game plan (how you get there).

A profitable digital marketing strategy works the same way. Your first step is to define your mission. What are you trying to achieve?
[Read more…]